Ayesha Raees

Ban

I am not allowed
to write this month.
I am going to live
this life as Life !! !
Googling good bars.
Hitting up acquaintances
like friends.
At St. Marks,
everyone waits for me
as I search for the perfect
word to replace myself:
Skunk, Babe, Womb, Lover–
I am done with words.
I am going to work at a bank.
I am going into tech.
I will go anywhere at this point.
At this club. Dancing.
Everyone’s falling in love.
I am the core of this crowd.
I am the heat. I am the sun.
Here are all the bodies
becoming skins,
here I am smothering
my eyes with my palms.
The fire is out.
The phone is dead.
I wake up in the morning
and run. At JFK,
all my friends
have lined up
to leave me.
I curse them.
I punch them.
I bid them
with this dirt mouth
full of prayered drench.
I say
Please
with my every
Ameen.
But it seems like God
is rude and deaf.
Insufferable.
Merciless.
Hiding well.
Oh well.
Time to turn
this body away
from regret.
At St. Marks,
again, I drink
dollar and a half draft beer
and piss all over
the place. Alone
with the mirror
in a bathroom,
I pout, I picture, I
x
face. In the middle
of the street, I look up
to look for airplanes.
But there is no singing
metal body, no roar
of vessel, no light
in the clear urban sky
yearning
for my hand wave.